In the production of coke, coal is heated and degassified in the chambers of a coking oven with the exclusion of air. To improve the quality of the coke, the coal is compacted to be coked into a coal cake, which is subsequently pushed into an empty coking oven chamber.
For compacting coal, mechanical stamping devices can be used, comprising a number of vertical stamper rods which are arranged next to one another, are distributed over the length of a stamping mould and carry plate-shaped stamper feet at the lower ends. When compacting, the stamper rods are raised by means of special lifting devices, for example pressed-on pairs of cam discs, and then allowed to fall freely, so that the bed of loose coal filled into the stamping mould is compacted by the stamper feet as with drop hammers.
DE 31 45 344 C discloses a stamping device in which it is not the potential energy of freely falling stampers that is used for compacting the coal, but vibrational energy transferred to the stamper feet by a vibrator respectively acting on the stamper rods. Here, too, the coking coal has to be successively compacted layer by layer, i.e. a bed of loose coal has to be introduced into the stamping mould and then subsequently compacted by stamping in alternating repetition in order to be able to create a coal cake with a density that is to some extent uniformly distributed over the length and width of the cake. For example, it has been necessary in stamping machines for five layers of coal 20 cm in height, for example, to be stamped successively, one on top of the other, in order to arrive at a height of the stamped coal cake of, for example, 1.0 m. Apart from this, the stamper feet hinder uniform filling of the stamping mould with coal material.
German Patent No. 292 336, issued on 2 Jun. 1916, describes to compact coal before coking not by stamping but by vibrating in a vibrating machine, which however is not specified there. This idea has not been taken up and put into practice by those skilled in the art. Instead, on the subject of vibratory compaction of coal to be coked, it has been proposed by DE 10 2005 031 188 B to introduce through holes in the top of a coking oven chamber a vibrator suspended from a cable as an active vibration element, which is intended to compact the loose coal filled into the oven chamber successively layer for layer. It is likely that implementation of this proposal will present difficulties, if only because it will not be easy to pull the vibrator out each time from a ready-vibration-compacted, solidified layer of coal, in particular if a binder is used.
Finally, with DE 10 2004 056 564 A, those skilled in the art turned completely away from the idea of vibratory compaction of coal to be coked, since not a vibrating machine but a hydraulic pressing device is proposed there, for producing a horizontally lying pressed coal cake for the purpose of subsequent coking.